1. Field of the Invention
This present invention relates to field of telephone communication devices. In particular, the present invention relates to a Hold/off Alert System (HAS), audibly alerting the held party on a telephone when he or she is released from a hold state.
2. Background of the Invention
Each and everyday, millions of people are spending millions of hours, holding and waiting on their phones--an idling non-activity. The Hold/off Alert System could enhance their productive capacity by allowing them to free their hands and work freely near the phone while they are on hold. Some callers may use speakerphones to free their hands, but speakerphones are rather expensive and not frequently used for a common household telephone. Moreover, callers may get annoyed from hearing repeated commercial messages from speakerphones and lots of background noise. An object of this invention is to let callers free their hands and work freely near their phones while waiting on hold. Thus, callers are alerted by a brief ring or beeps when the called phone inactivates the hold function.
There had been a few similar inventions which was purported to achieve the same function. As early as in 1976, Caffine noticed the inconvenience of the phone-holding condition and patented a related invention with U.S. Pat. No. 3,961,142 with a poor result due to its complexity and its reliance on an ineffective voice recognition arrangement to set off an alert sound. After Caffine's invention, Dubner disclosed a better and less costly device with U.S. Pat. No. 4,425,479 but it still was dependent on an ineffective voice recognition means to set off an alarm. A second series of patents departed from voice recognition aspects, and instead relied on a message playback recorder to allow callers to be called back. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,834,552 uses a means to reach the party on hold via the use of a message playback recorder. This could be a time-consuming and irritating process for the hold-initiating party, especially when numerous callers use the system. In 1998, another automated telephone hold device was disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,822,403, where a voice playback mechanism was again used to inform the hold-initiating party what must be done to reach the party on hold. The present invention departs from such voice playback mechanisms and eliminates the above mentioned time-consuming process by transmitting and receiving information via the multiple use of automatically generated DTMF signals. Due to such a feature, the called party does not have to follow any routines to talk to the party on hold as in the message playback means. In addition, the Hold/off Alert System uses DTMF tone signals to overcome the problems with the aforementioned voice recognition means in the prior art. The Hold/off Alert System also differs from earlier inventions because it is an integral part of a telephone or a telephone system and not a separate device.